This interview with Matt Rogers, the co-fouder of NEST, is a revealing look at the formation of a truly great startup, and is a must watch for any entrepreneur.

Matt left an amazing job at Apple in 2010 to co-found Nest Labs. Nest, which received funding from some of the best venture capitalists in the world including Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Shasta and Google Ventures has revolutionized the mundane and oft ignored home thermostat. And my sense is that there is much more to come from this great company.

Nest is an exciting company at an exciting time. The rise of the internet of things, and the coming of age of the smart home are two interesting trends (among others) driving a renaissance in hardware startups. We're starting to see a plethora of internet connected appliances, from smart watering systems that know all about pending rainfall to power hungry clothes dryers that know when the cheapest electricity is available.

Mark Ruddock

Personal blog of an international FinTech executive.

Hi, I'm Mark Ruddock, I'm a Canadian entrepreneur with two successful exits and over 20 years of experience at the helm of VC backed technology startups.

I'm currently Chairman of Finstar Labs. Our mission at Finstar Labs is to identify, invest in and help create the cutting edge user experiences, enabling technologies, and data science that will lay the foundation for the next generation of alternative financial services.

Prior to that I was Managing Director, International at Wonga, responsible for overseeing all businesses outside of the UK, including consumer lending businesses in Canada, Spain, Poland and South Africa and our eCommerce and product financing business BillPay in Germany.

Prior to that I was the CEO of Viigo, which became one of the most highly downloaded Blackberry apps of all time before being acquired by RIM (Blackberry) in 2010.

Before that I was the founder & CEO of INEA, an enterprise software company focused on the financial services industry, which was acquired by Cartesis in 2005, and is now part of SAP.